COMMUNITY OUTREACH MONTHLY REPORT
APRIL 2018 SUMMARY The month of April experienced an unusual increase in rainfall. This was also reported over several parts of the country with Kitui station recording the highest day total rainfall of 254.1 millimetres, which is classified as extremely heavy rainfall especially considering it lies in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL). Several farmers did not ignore the heavy rains and responded with planting crops with a hope of great harvests. Members of the community especially where DSWT has put the beehive fences have reported to be reaping the benefits of the fence as the increased human-elephant conflict brought on by elephant invasion to increasingly lush farms have not affected them. This depicts the effectiveness of bee fencing as a Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) mitigation tool. Several community members have requested to have the bee fence erected in their lands after closely monitoring its service in the last few years since its initiation.
BEEHIVE FENCES In April, the DSWT has closely monitored the beehive fence, with an aim of replacing the weaker older fence to ensure the efficiency of the project. Ratels (Mellivora capensis) also known as honey badgers, which raid the hives, have been managed by installing iron sheets on the poles with each hives. A total of 90 pieces of iron sheets have been installed in two separate bee farms where honey badgers were reported to be threatening to invade bee hives.
Date 2/4/2018 2/4/2018
village Syusyani Ngiluni
Number of iron sheets 44 46
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is reliant on your kind support in order to keep our community outreach projects running. For more information about these projects please visit www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.com/community or email info@dswt.org